5.19.2022 – modularity

modularity
globally contagious back
up redundancy

Gloom and doom again.

This time it is the world’s food system that is tottering on the brink.

In reading the article, The banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same, by George Monbiot in the Guardian today, I was struck by the polysyllabic string of words in this paragraph.

“So here’s what sends cold fear through those who study the global food system. In recent years, just as in finance during the 2000s, key nodes in the food system have swollen, their links have become stronger, business strategies have converged and synchronised, and the features that might impede systemic collapse (“redundancy”, “modularity”, “circuit breakers” and “backup systems”) have been stripped away, exposing the system to “globally contagious” shocks.”

Anyone experiencing the ‘supply chain’ issues of recent months or the current baby formula crisis will find it hard to not be overcome by cold fear.

I am reminded of Mr. Bill Bryson’s book, A Walk in the Woods, about his efforts on the Appalachian Trail, where Mr. Bryson comments on the Chestnut Tree Blight that hit the United States in 1904.

Mr. Bryson writes, “At the height of the American chestnut blight, every woodland breeze would loose spores in uncountable trillions to drift in a pretty, lethal haze onto neighbouring hillsides. The mortality rate was 100 per cent. In just over thirty-five years the American chestnut became a memory. The Appalachians alone lost four billion trees, a quarter of its cover, in a generation.“

Then Mr. Bryson states, “A great tragedy, of course. But how lucky, when you think about it, that these diseases are at least species specific. Instead of a chestnut blight or Dutch elm disease or dogwood anthracnose, what if there was just a tree blight – something indiscriminate and unstoppable that swept through whole forests?“

I feel that that is just what the world is facing.

Something indiscriminate and unstoppable.

‘Just in time’ supply chains have converged and synchronised the world’s food system into one huge network that works if everything works but if one thing link in the chain breaks, an indiscriminate and unstoppable force brings the network down.

Maybe the world could handle shortages of one of two items, much like the baby formula problem right now, but indiscriminate and unstoppable is pretty much all encompassing.

Mr. Bryson was writing about nature and we have done to it through our interactions with nature.

With the food system, we have done to ourselves.

5.18.2022 – stunts brash marketing

stunts brash marketing
found crucial ingredient
treat customers well

The baseball great, Ted Williams, once said, “If you don’t think so great, don’t think so much.”

“Most people are usually pressing to play well, thinking about their performance a lot,” Savannah pitcher, Kyle Luigs says. “But if you can get out of your comfort zone and do something to get your mind completely off baseball … you’ll play better.”

Of course, I am talking about baseball.

Savannah Baseball.

Savannah Banana’s Baseball.

“This is saving baseball from itself,” Spaceman Bill Lee says. “Look at the fans’ response, look at the way the kids are showing up.”

If you haven’t heard, read this article.

There is not much I don’t like about the Bananas.

And with all the bananas stuff going on its this bottom line of “For all the stunts and brash marketing, the franchise has found a crucial ingredient that traces to Barnum’s dictum about treating customers well.“

Saving baseball from itself.

Did you know that all tickets are somewhere around $35?

Did you know once you get in, most concession food is free and all you can eat?

Tickets.

Those are the big problem.

How to get them?

5.15.2022 – the smiling, laughing,

the smiling, laughing,
making me comfortable
was it possible

I like to start my day with a newspaper.

Which means today, my day starts online.

I like to go over the Google News headlines WITH tracking turned OFF so I can tell myself that I am getting a overview of the news, not a view tailored to my interests.

Then I click on the Guardian from Manchester, UK. (or is UK now out and GB back in?)

Of late, my outlook on life has been downright dark and gloomy and what I read in the paper or as Will Rodgers said, “All I know is what I read in the papers” and what I read is also downright dark and gloomy.

The other day I was gifted with several stories that, when read in the order I read them, gave me a mental kick in the pants.

As Mr. Lincoln said of General John Pope, who detailed many of this reports “Written from Headquarters in the Saddle” that General Pope “had his headquarters where is hindquarters should have been.”

I have had my head in my butt and all has been doom and gloom.

I am in a funk and I cannot get out.

Waiting to exhale.

Waiting for the shoes to drop.

Just waiting and waiting.

We moved to what is called the Low Country of South Carolina about a year and a half ago.

We found a good church and then we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone to get involved and joined a small group that meets every other week or so.

We are talking our way through the topic of when bad things happen.

We are all pretty much in agreement that while we cannot see the plan, bad things DO happen, but in the end, things work out according to God’s plan and when the time comes to look back, the plan can become a little more evident.

I have no problem with this.

Though it leaves unanswered the unanswerable ‘what do you do or how do you handle yourself in that moment when the bad things are happening.’

Often, knowing that there will come a time when you can look back and see the hidden God given strength that helped you get through the bad things can be pretty thin at the moment.

To boil it down I would say that:

One: Bad things happen.

Two: Things work out as we leave things in God’s hands, or as CS Lewis would say, “It always was in God’s hands.”

Then the third point, Three: this is what you do while bad things are happening.

Notice I did sat what ‘this’ is.

As I said, of late, the news has been pretty bleak and the bad things that are happening has pretty much got me into a semi-permanent funk on the worldly issues of Country, Economy and Civil Strife.

Then I was gifted three stories in a row that responded to these three points about bad things and the current state of affairs.

First, bad things happen.

I read the article, “Americans believe nothing is getting better. Biden feeds that disillusionment” by David Sirota with much nodding and much “Boy HOWDY but that is how I feel.”

Mr. Sirota writes that many people are going through ‘Jokerfication’ – a concept based on the Joker in Batman which describes ‘becoming so thoroughly disillusioned that one loses faith in everything.’

Mr. Sirota then lists the reasons for Jokerfication and I find it hard to argue with any of them.

Thoroughly disillusioned is a marvelous phrase.

There is no light at the end of this tunnel or so it seems.

But to the 2nd point, things will get better and we will be able to see bad times in the rear view mirror.

The next article I came across was “An optimist’s guide to the future: the economist who believes that human ingenuity will save the world” by David Shariatmadari which is a review of the book, The Journey of Humanity by Econmist Oded Galor (who I have never heard of just to be transparent).

Mr. Shariatmadari writes that Mr. Galor’s: “message appears to be that whatever the circumstances you have inherited, change is possible. It’s an analysis of the human condition that leads not to a counsel of despair, but a new set of tools he believes can help build a better future.”

There is much to Mr. Galor’s to try to grasp but I was fascinated by the observation there are two cultures in the history of the world.

Wheat farmers and Rice farmers and society grew up around those two basic fundamental life styles.

I was especially intrigued as I now live what was the focus of rice growing economy in wheat growing North America but for another time.

Mr. Shariatmadari ends his review with, “For many, though, a dose of faith in human progress will be hard to resist.“

And, BOY HOWDY, do identify with that!

SO there we are.

Bad things happen, but there is hope that the future can find answers to these bad things.

SO what about the third point.

What is ‘this is what you do’?

Remember we are talking about a world view here.

The next article I clicked had the headline, “How an encounter with a friendly person made me see myself differently” by Sinéad Stubbins.

Ms. Stubbins related how arriving early for an appointment she and another lady dealt with being locked out of an office.

Ms. Stubbins writes, “Then it struck me. Everything this woman had been doing – the smiling, the laughing, making me feel comfortable when I was doing silly things – I had been doing too. We were mirroring each other’s warmth exactly. Could it be? … She was friendly. Was it possible that I was friendly too?”

Simplistic I know.

But I am repulsed by the feeling of Jokerfication and I want to reject it and if the answer is to be friendly then I will embrace that and let you know how it goes.

Sometimes I need to be told to hang on, it will be okay in the end.

That I read these online stories in a row was seemingly more than chance and I appreciate it.

5.12.2022 – but the common thing

but the common thing
decision opening up
strive toward the wind

Based on the poem, Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond, by Mary Oliver.

Again, a big thank you to my sister Lisa, to telling me about Ms. Oliver.

(Feel free to touch base and tell me what to read.)

For me, herons, seeing a heron, has been and still is a harbinger of good fortune, a good omen.

Not that you saw herons all that often in West Michigan where I grew up but maybe that was part of it.

And not that I really believe in good omens but more in line that seeing one made me feel that, surely, this wasn’t as black a world as I made it out to be.

And I have had enough Latin and roman history to not think about omens and not smile inwardly.

It is in the movie Spartacus that Roman Senator Sempronius Gracchus, played by Charles Laughton, walks out of the Senate and buys a pigeon saying “Let’s make a good old-fashioned sacrifice.“

Still I cannot see a heron and somehow, not feel better.

I also cannot see a heron that I do not think of the time that Doug, my college roommate, and I were driving back to Ann Arbor, Michigan on I-96 and a heron dove out of the sky and swooped low, just above the median between the two sides of the freeway in a glide..

As I remember it, we were going about 60 miles an hour.

This was way back in the ‘Drive 55’ era and it took forever to get to Ann Arbor.

The heron passed us.

Here is the poem.

Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond by Mary Oliver.

So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself —
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

takes her in.

I took this photo of a heron on a dock on Pinckney Island in South Carolina during a day of dolphin counting.

The heron stood on the post with a look that told me I was standing on a dock that the heron owned and my presence wasn’t much more than tolerated.

There are a lot more heron’s down here than I have ever seen in my life.

Looking at the these birds standing still and I think how could anyone have made a bird like this?

Looking at these birds in flight and I think, how else could anyone have made a bird like this?

The phrase “have been fearfully and wonderfully made” from the book of Psalms comes to mind.

– – – – – – –

Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.

This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.

I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.

Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.

This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.

It IS cricket because I say it is.

It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.

Thus I have this series of haiku based on the poem ‘Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond‘ by Mary Oliver.

5.11.2022 – algorithmic tools

algorithmic tools
efficiency, saving costs
it is not foolproof

Adapted from this paragraph:

Yet it is not foolproof. One of the most consequential findings comes from Harvard Business School professor Joe Fuller, whose team surveyed more than 2,250 business leaders in the US, UK and Germany. Their motives for using algorithmic tools were efficiency and saving costs. Yet 88% of executives said that they know their tools reject qualified candidates.

In the article, Finding it hard to get a new job? Robot recruiters might be to blame by by Hilke Schellmann in todays Guardian.

Ms. Schellmann, a journalism professor at New York University and a freelance reporter covering artificial intelligence, writes that:

Martin Burch had been working for the Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones for a few years and was looking for new opportunities. One Sunday in May 2021, he applied for a data analyst position at Bloomberg in London that looked like the perfect fit. He received an immediate response, asking him to take a digital assessment.

It was strange. The assessment showed him different shapes and asked him to figure out the pattern. He started feeling incredulous. “Shouldn’t we be testing my abilities on the job?” he asked himself.

The next day, a Monday, which happened to be a public holiday in the UK, he got a rejection email. He decided to email a recruiter at Bloomberg. Maybe the company made a mistake?

What Burch discovered offers insight into a larger phenomenon that is baffling experts: while there are record level job openings in both the UK and in the US, why do many people still have to apply to sometimes hundreds of jobs, even in sought-after fields like software development, while many companies complain they can’t find the right talent?

A recruiter at Bloomberg replied: “I can see that your application was rejected due to not meeting our benchmark in the Plum assessment that you completed. Unfortunately on that basis we are not able to take your application any further.” Burch felt stunned that he had indeed been rejected by a piece of code.

Ms. Schellmann stated that, “Some experts argue that algorithms and artificial intelligence now used extensively in hiring are playing a role. This is a huge shift, because until relatively recently, most hiring managers would handle applications and resumes themselves. Yet recent findings have shown that some of these new tools discriminate against women and use criteria unrelated to work to “predict” job success.”

Burch felt stunned.

He had indeed been rejected by a piece of code.

Much like baseball, you now get hired by the numbers, not whether or not you can hit the curve.

Yet it is not foolproof.

Gee, what a surprise.